They’re separate companies now so I don’t think it’s as easy to move between HH and IM as it once was.
The pay would still be higher at Heavy Haul Rail than Freightliner but the T&Cs are a lot better at the latter.
At IM you have a rostered 13 week roster, so you know exactly what times you are working for that 13 week cycle. If they want to change your job they’ve got to pay you to change (3 hours for a longer job, 2 hours for a shorter job plus a phone call booked at an hour). You must start and finish at your depot, you don’t drive any vans or company vehicles, so it’s passenger trains or taxis. You hardly work any weekends (3 in 13 Saturdays and 0 Sundays where I was at). You only work class 4 container trains, so no T3 work. The intermodal work is more secure so there’s less chance of redundancies and the IM pension pot was in a pretty healthy position.
I never worked for HH and not sure what it’s like now since its become Heavy Haul Rail. But I know they work time bands, so personal life is much harder to plan, you’ll lodge more, do T3s, the work and contracts are volatile and can be easily lost. Driving vans etc. I know some drivers who loved HH because they liked sitting on a T3 site for 12 hours and staying away from home all week. It’s obviously personal preference.
But generally Freightliner (Intermodal) is seen as the best FOC to work for because of the T&Cs. We had loads of drivers come from DB, GBRf and even TOCs and they couldn’t believe how much better it was.
